An ocean of thoughts,earlier this blog was named as "Indian Sociology..my burst and commentary". This is because it was meant to express myself on some general observations clicking my mind about my milieu...the Indian milieu.
Subsequently a realisation dawned on that it was surging more as some breaking magma within . Arguments gave the heat to this molten hot matter which is otherwise there in each of us.
Hence the renaming.

Sunday, March 03, 2013

Tipping/gift is essential to business, not bribery

Tipping is an essential part of conducting businesses. When a person feels please or grateful to someone for the service the other has rendered, he expresses this pleasure or gratefulness by giving him a gift. Tipping originates from giving a small gift to someone lower in the rank and who is likely to be getting less salaries. Compliments are an extension of the same idea relevant for people of higher ranks, who have been useful in accomplishing some task. Bakhshish and Touffa are the Arabic word for these same notions.
The critical challenge is essentially about differentiating a Gift/Tip from a Bribe. Essentially, bribe refers to payments to a government officials for doing manipulations in his regular duty, or even to private company employees for 'adjusting' his decisions.
The law in general honours the notions accepted and practised in the society. Therefore , it does not forbid the very notion of gift/tip exchange altogether, but puts a condition tag of making the public-declaration of this exchange so to help clearly differ it from a Bribe. as a matter of fact, the bribe givers had earlier, in the past, conducted their exchange using gift/tip as the camouflage.
In the more recent years, the corrupt have discovered an advanced technique of accomplishing the unlawful exchange. The exchange today is via an apparently lawful looking business like the purchases of some wasteful commodity from the receiver of the bribe at an unusually high price. The higher price is the method of transmitting the bribe to the receiver, who acts as the seller of the goods.
In the affairs, what stands outright is the fact that tipping and gift exchanges are not illegal per se.
The other obstruction to the idea of giving tip/gift as a business exchange is the socialist and communist ideology where all businesses are deemed to be a part of the state's resources. Therefore everyone is supposedly a paid employee of the state, both the business/service seeker and the service giver. Resultant belief is that there is no argument to feel pleased with someone personalized or impersonalised service because all services are a part of the government nominated duties. The argument for not giving gift/tip is that 'you have just done your duty for which you are being given a salary''.
As is obvious, the liberal Democractic beliefs discard this argument where businesses, many of them, Infact hinge on the 'pleased' responses of the customers. Why and how will an individual start or even think of setting a business of washing your car, or giving a wash to your dog unless he has a means to judge that some people are actually 'pleased' with such services and ready to pay , even if in terms of gift/tip, to the service giver. Obvious enough, in a socialist/communist state, the state is not going to organise such business. Such business can hardly find their origin roots in these states. If these business make big in liberal Democractic world, the socialist/communist are likely to follow suit.
the above can reveal why even the perfectly socialist/communist states are also difficult to find long term existence. This ,in turn, might explain why gift/tip cannot be done away with from human society.
However, some distractors use the above argument to suggest that corruption/bribe is also an essential part of the businesses. Truth could rather be indeed restrained, that since gift/tip cannot be differed away, bribe will remain out from being perfectly abolished.